Independents brew new life into urban neighborhoods

In once run-down urban districts across the country, craft breweries have helped to transform the neighborhoods around them.

Small business owners tackled the hard work of transforming industrial buildings, many of which had sat empty as demographic changes pulled manufacturers and residents to the suburbs.

Small-time, independent brewers have been one of the beer market’s growth drivers. The number of breweries in the U.S. catapulted from 92 in 1980 to 2,514 as of May 2013, according to craft beer trade group Brewers Association. Barrels shipped have more than doubled in the past decade, and craft beer now makes up nearly 7 percent of a U.S. beer market that is growing slowly overall, according to trade publication Beer Marketer’s Insights.

As the breweries churned out beer, they drew visitors and eventually new, young residents — and more small businesses.

Here’s a look at six breweries whose presence helped to change their surroundings:

DOWNTOWN DIGS

Boulevard Brewing opened in 1989 in its Kansas City, Mo. Westside neighborhood, creating a brewery out of a building that had been a railroad’s laundry. While it probably would have been cheaper for the company to be in the suburbs, the brewery’s managers are “committed urbanists” who like the idea of contributing to the vitality of the central city as opposed to building on undeveloped land in the suburbs, says Boulevard’s CFO, Jeff Crum.

The building’s renovation ranged from replacing pipes to cutting out a skylight to make room for tanks.

The brewery, at first, struggled to attract visitors, but now draws about 50,000 people annually as the area around it picked up alongside a broader renewal in nearby downtown Kansas City.

ON THE WATERFRONT

Harpoon Brewery opened on the South Boston waterfront in 1986, when it was surrounded by auto body shops and little else. Now the brewery draws more than 85,000 people a year from tours and tastings, and thousands more from festivals. These days, the city is focused on redeveloping the area. New apartment and office buildings, restaurants and a convention center sit nearby.

Harpoon recently negotiated a 50-year lease with the city. The rent will rise over time, but generally, long leases provide protection from spikes that can happen when an area becomes so popular that property values skyrocket.

RUST BELT REVAMP

Great Lakes opened in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood in 1988. The downtown neighborhood was “perceived as dangerous and blighted” into the 1980s, says Eric Wobser. He works for Ohio City Inc., a nonprofit that promotes residential and commercial development while trying to preserve the neighborhood’s older buildings.

Great Lakes built a brewery and a brewpub. Other breweries and businesses — a pasta maker, a bike shop, a tortilla factory, as well as restaurants and bars — followed. Newcomers flock to the neighborhood, even though Cleveland’s overall population is still declining. The city repaved the quiet street next to the brewery, Market Ave., with cobblestones, and poured millions into renovating a nearby 19th-century market.

BREWERY BUBBLE

In the waterfront Ballard section of Seattle, home to fishing shops, shipyards and boat fueling facilities for decades, six breweries have sprung up in the past two years. They joined Hale’s Ales and Maritime Pacific Brewing, which both opened in Ballard in the 1990s.

Hale’s Ales in 1995 took over a facility that had housed an industrial hose manufacturer and before that a maker of engines.

Though Ballard is still a hub of maritime industry, it has landed higher-income apartment buildings and has attracted restaurants and nightlife.

BROOKLYN BRANDS

When Brooklyn Brewery opened in the Williamsburg section of the New York City borough in 1996, its neighbors were mostly deserted warehouses and factories. Today, Brooklyn Brewery is surrounded by modern apartment buildings, trendy bars, shops and restaurants. There’s still some graffiti, but that hasn’t deterred the influx of new residents willing to spend a lot of money to live there. In the past decade, home values in the Brewery’s neighborhood have more than doubled — up 145 percent, according to real estate appraiser Miller Samuel. Brooklyn Brewery and another local craft brewer, Kelso, worry that rising property values will eventually force them out of their current neighborhoods.

ACROSS THE BAY

The tech boom has made one brewpub’s growth plans more complicated. In San Francisco, 21st Amendment brewery is two blocks from AT&T Park where baseball’s Giants play. Along with the bustling technology sector, 21st Amendment helped to transform the city’s SoMa neighborhood.

“People refer to use as the granddaddy of the neighborhood,” says 21st Amendment founder Nico Freccia.

Now the company wants to build an 80,000-square-foot brewery — but property values are too high. The company has opened offices in the East Bay, and is scouting space there for the brewery, hoping to help revitalize an Oakland neighborhood.

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